


Aftershock

by QueenOfTheWesternSky



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe-Post Sburb, Gen, Multi, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfTheWesternSky/pseuds/QueenOfTheWesternSky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is John Egbert and you don't know if this world was ever meant for the four of you.</p><p>--</p><p>Your name is Rose Lalonde and you don't know if things are going to get better.</p><p>--</p><p>Your name is Jade Harley and you don’t think you’re ever going to be the happy-go-lucky person you once were again.</p><p>--</p><p>Your name is Dave Strider and you don’t think this is going to work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Your name is John Egbert and you don’t know if this world was ever meant for the four of you.

You are not after all, human. Not anymore at least. You were once and maybe you miss that more than you’re willing to say. You’re pretty sure you aren’t the only one who feels like this, but you’re pretty sure this is one of those things you can’t talk to your friends about, because none of you are ready to handle it. You might not ever be. 

There are a lot of things like that, things that none of you will ever really be okay to talk about. In fact, the last few years of your life are a kind of taboo. Unfortunately, when someone breaks down—an occurrence that is a lot more frequent than you want it to be—things must be said, spoken about. Sometimes it helps, and sometimes it’s just tearing open old wounds and never allowing them to heal.

Rose was the one who suggested going back to school. You’ve missed a lot, but it’s a good idea. You can’t just sit there forever, expecting the world to treat you as the heroes you were meant to be. It isn’t going to happen. You aren’t anyone to them, the people of this world (You can’t bring yourself to say _your_ world or Earth, because this isn’t your world, nor is it the planet you grew up on. But they don’t know that), the four of you are just some kids with a tonne of issues, who are pretty cagey about a lot of things.

The remnants of lives you never lead, or perhaps fragments of your world that managed to escape into this one, fund your lives now. Each of your respective, now deceased, guardians left behind a pretty extravagant will. You’re thankful, but try not to think about where the money comes from to pay for the house you all live in, or the clothes you wear, or the food you eat. You’re already screwed up enough without rubbing salt into the wounds.

So you all agree to go back. Jade’s a little excited, she’s never been before, and you all sort of smile and laugh at her enthusiasm for something you all loathe so much. It’s nice, normal, and for a while, you think maybe you can all work this out and things can be okay again.

It’s a long while before you learn you are wrong, that’s something else you’re thankful for, that grace period where you all thought this might work. It was nice, pleasant, peaceful.

You were all a little hesitant to take classes on your own, so for most of the time you ended up taking classes with each other. You and Dave took biology, Rose and Jade did math, you all took art. But some classes you did by yourselves, Rose was the first to suggest something like that. You always knew she was brave, and when Jade said maybe that wasn’t a great idea, Dave backed Rose up like he always does.

Good. Rose can handle herself, you think. She’s as brave as any of you, she’ll be okay. And if she’s not, then the three of you will pick her back up, dust her off, and destroy whatever caused the problem.

It seems extreme, but coming from a place where death and destruction were so every day, the words have lost their impact, destroying something seems like just another chore. Wash the dishes, feed the pets, keep each other safe. That was not it worked, and all of you were more than okay with that.

People stared. They stared a lot. The four of you are a pretty weird sight, you suppose. And maybe, just maybe, they sensed that you were not like them, somehow on some level, you were not human in the way they were. It scared a lot of people. Dave thought it was for the best, but it made Jade sad. She’d always wanted normal friends, and now there was nothing normal about her. Rose told her it was okay, that they loved her regardless, and that if the people there had any sense, they would too.

For a while it was okay.

You all spoke to people, though never for more than a few moments before turning back to one another. Because you didn’t _want_ each others company, you _needed_ it. You needed it more than air, because you are all relics of a world that doesn’t exist and a war no one else knows was fought. You think if you lost one of them, that would be it. You’d become the monsters you all knew you had the potential to be. And you wouldn’t care.

Eventually people started to notice something was up.

Whenever you got angry, you almost caused hurricanes. You never meant to, you didn’t really want to hurt anyone (Lest they hurt _them_ ) but you couldn’t control it very well now. Even if people didn’t want to fully understand, they made the connection. And you were officially labelled weird.

Some stupid guy none of you had ever spoken to made one joke too many about it, and Jade began seething. Same guy shoved you in the hallway a while later, again cracking jokes about you. Jade just happen to be walking to her next class and saw, she sprinted down the hallway at a speed no human being could run and shoved the guy so hard, he crashed into the lockers behind him and left a massive dent in them.

She didn’t shout, the calmness and quietness of her tone only made the entire thing more terrifying as she made it very clear that you were not to be messed with. If you weren’t so concerned for the guy’s life, you might have been embarrassed about Jade having to stand up for you. But you knew Jade, and honestly? There were few people you’d rather have on your side.

You were frozen and didn’t think to stop her. Dave had felt something—he knew, he always knew—and had bolted out of his class to grab Jade before she punched the guy’s face in. Before you knew what was happening, Rose had your arm and was pulling you to your feet, while Dave tried to calm down a near hysterical Jade.

You’d offered to go with, but Dave told you and Rose to stay in class, he’d take Jade home. You felt bad, but then Jade smiled at you and told you it was all alright, and you really couldn’t say anything to that. You went about your business, people stopped making jokes and generally left you alone.

When you got home after school, Dave and Jade were asleep on the couch under a blanket in a tangled mess of limbs with a half empty tea cup on the coffee table in front of them. Jade looked peaceful and you were so glad she was okay.

But of course that was only the beginning. Rumours started flying, some good and some bad. A bunch of guys lined up to ask Jade out, and she declined each of them very politely. If they wouldn’t take no for an answer, Rose would sort them out. If Rose’s doom glare didn’t cover it, Dave was always there as back up. You understood. It’s hard to share anything with someone who can’t understand the first thing about you. But later she said that she simply didn’t need anyone outside the three of you.

There had been a mildly embarrassing group hug to follow.

But those moments weren’t going to last. The bad rumours seemed to overtake the good ones and someone tried to throw you into a gym locker. You panicked and almost started a tornado in the locker room, taking three punches to the gut before the others showed up. This time Jade didn’t even have time to get near the guys before Dave had laid them out flat. You were glad for one reason and one reason only: Because Dave was a physical fighter, if you had to fight, you’d destroy the whole city with gale force winds without even meaning to.

They knew that. You couldn’t be allowed to fight or a lot of people would die.

Even if they thought you were weak, you couldn’t put anyone’s life at risk. Not again. Not ever again.

Your name is John Egbert and you damn well know this world wasn’t meant for the four of you, because unless you’re careful, it is going to crumble around you.


	2. Chapter 2

Your name is Rose Lalonde and you don’t know if things are going to get better, for the first time in a long time, you cannot tell what the future holds, and that scares you a lot more than you’re ever going to admit.

This whole thing was your idea, and you wished you could say you didn’t regret it. You needed a normal life, all of you. To go to school and to live. You knew if someone didn’t stand up and say something, make the four of you continue with life, you would have all wasted the rest of your lives (You don’t how long your lives are, you don’t even have a way of guessing. You don’t know if you’ll ever die, and that terrifies you). You needed to do something.

At first it was a great idea, now you wonder if perhaps you’ve made a mistake. That’s rubbish, you _know_ you’ve made a mistake. It started when that guy had a go at John. You hate to say it, you really do, but you know if Dave hadn’t taken Jade out of there, she probably would have killed him. She wouldn’t have meant it, and you know it. At her core, Jade is a good person, a sweet girl, and you love her more than the stars you suspect she is made of. But instincts that are not hers control her now, and those instincts tell her you, John and Dave are to be protected.

You should have known something would go wrong. It’s unlike you to not think out the full consequences of something before diving in, but you couldn’t stand the idea of watching people who’d once been so full of life wither and die in that house you all shared. You just couldn’t. So you’d done the first thing that had come to mind: Forced them all into school.

It worked for a while, you swear it did. Now you fear, not for the safety of your friends, but for the safety of the people around you. John has incredibly destructive powers, as does Jade, on top of her ability to fight and her canine instincts, Dave is a war machine—it kills you to think that way about him, but it’s true, he was in there longer than any of you were, and it _destroyed_ him—and you? Well, some days you don’t really know whether or not you have it under control.

You caught some girls behind the cafeteria taking sips out of a bottle of tequila and thought you were suffering a panic attack. You could _feel_ the horrorterrors clawing their way into your heart when Dave found you. He calmed you down and didn’t tell the others afterwards. You love him for it.

People think you’re weird, but in the more average way. The way they did before this all happened, back in middle school. Good. You like the familiarity. One of the only classes you take alone is creative writing, which you spend most of scribbling in your journals, snap shots of the world you once lived in and the place you were trapped in when it was gone, you have to write them down or they’ll escape you and then they’ll be gone. 

You hate every moment of that… _game_ but it defined you. It made you who you are and it is the reason you are where you are in life. You cannot, you will not, forget it. Not a single second. Maybe the others are determined to pretend it never happened or put it behind them. But you know better. You know it was important, so very important, and you will not let it slip through your fingers.

Who are you without your past?

A lost little girl.

You will _never_ be some lost little girl.

About a fortnight after the second incident with John—Dave had been suspended for ten days as a result, and had only just resumed his classes—your creative writing teacher finally caught you scribbling in your journal. He grabs it and starts reading it out to the class in an attempt at mocking you, thinking you’d been passing notes or something, but about three lines in he realises the magnitude of what he’s just read and he is _terrified_. Everyone else in the class is too.

He sends you to the counsellor. You say nothing. She lets you leave with the journal and Dave is waiting outside her office for you. He offers out his arm to you, like you’re a queen, and escorts you to the cafeteria for lunch. John and Jade are waiting at the table you always sit at.

Again, he doesn’t tell them.

You’re quite tempted to kiss him to say thank you. But he’d probably just stutter and ramble—something you sort of wish he’d do, the only time he does it now is when he’s asleep and it is terrifying.

Some girl from your class approaches you and asks you about what the teacher read out. You tell her it was a fairy tale. The real kind, where people die and blood is spilt and no one lives happily ever after.

She tells you she wants you to know how it ends.

You tell her you don’t know. The fairy tale isn’t over yet.

Your friends look at you with knowing looks, and she asks you if when you know how it ends, if she could perhaps know.

You just nod and turn back to the cup of coffee John got you from the awful coffee maker they have at the school. Coffee, no matter how bad, is always good. You even crack a joke about how it’s black like your soul. Jade and John laugh. Dave smiles. Everything feels okay for a while.

John is walking with you to French class (He took it with you because Jade is already fluent and Dave thinks it sounds girly, even though you know he kind of agrees with Dave), when someone sneers at you about what happened in your last class. You grab John by the wrist when he moves to attack, and pull him back, whispering a quiet “Don’t”.

You both know what could happen. You don’t want that on John’s conscience because of you.

He grumbles about it all through French Class, you call him a dear and tell him you know he would’ve defended you to the end of the world. You know he would have. He already has. A few times now. But this isn’t the end of the world. This is some fake second generation version of Chicago. You’re learning to live with that.

Your name is Rose Lalonde and you know things aren’t going to get any better, this is the hand you’ve been dealt and now you have to live with it.


	3. Chapter 3

Your name is Jade Harley, and you don’t think you’re ever going to be the happy-go-lucky person you once were again.

You trust your friends, your instincts and nothing else. Not even your own mind can be trusted because it _lies_. It tells you things that you know aren’t true, it makes you believe things that are false, it makes you afraid when you know you should feel at ease and you hate it.

When Rose suggested school, you were excited. You’d never been and wanted to know what it was like, plus you thought it might breathe some life back into the four of you. And for a while, that’s what it did. It made you feel alive and wonderful, you had your friends with you and for a few hours each day you were too busy for your mind to wander to things you’d rather not think about.

But then things started going wrong.

People attacked John, so you attacked them. You don’t regret it. You feel sort of bad that Dave had to miss music class to take you home though. You know how much he loves it, but he said he didn’t mind, you were more important. Sometimes you really feel terrible for him, he worries about all of you so much, he loses himself sometimes.

You make him cuddle with you on the huge couch Rose had picked out and he mumbled silly little raps in your ear until you both fell asleep there. John and Rose joined you when they got home and it was okay again. For a while.

That seems to be the story of your life. Everything was okay, for a while.

But then the world collapses around you.

Rose thinks you don’t know, but Dave talks in his sleep and you know everything that’s happened. You want to go to her and hold her and tell her how sorry you are, how much you wish you could help, that you know how it feels. But you don’t. If Rose didn’t want you to know, it’d be mean to approach her about it. So you pretend you don’t know but take the time to make sure she knows how lost you’d be without her, and hug her for a little longer than normal.

She seems calmer and you’re so glad, but it doesn’t last long of course.

You screw up. You screw up really bad because you underestimated just how much you’d changed since you were that little girl on an island. You didn’t think it was that much weight, honestly, it was a joke, but then everyone was looking at you like you were a crazy person. When you dropped the weight, the noise made Dave jump and within a heartbeat, he’s standing in front of you, his hand at his waist, going for the sword that he doesn’t have—it’s sitting in his room at home, because he wouldn’t put it away, he’s too scared he’ll need it again—and you feel awful for scaring him like that.

You ask the teacher quietly, if you could be excused and without a word, Dave escorts you out, an arm around your shoulders, leading you out into the courtyard. He leaves and comes back with Rose and John and they all hug you, telling you its fine, you didn’t do anything wrong. You love them for it, but you know you slipped up.

You all skip your last class for the day and John pays when you all decide to instead spend the afternoon in the local ice cream shop. You’re more grateful than words can express for the distraction.

You’re too scared to go to school again tomorrow, so you stay home. Rose tells the teachers you have the flu, and they all sort of don’t want to leave you by yourself. But you tell them you’ll be fine and back at school tomorrow.

When they leave you sort of freak out and John texts every hour to check in, Dave runs home during lunch to make sure you’re okay and Rose makes a fancy kind of tea for you when she gets home. The two of you drink tea and eat cake and laugh so hard, the boys think you’ve gone nuts.

You think you might be her again. That girl, the one who only believed the best in people and who loved more passionately than anyone. You think you are on your way to being her again and it’s an amazing feeling.

It doesn’t last long. By the end of your second class the following day, you can hardly stand all the eyes on you. Either John or Dave wait outside your classroom and escort you from place to place, giving a mean glare to anyone who looks for too long. You’re pretty sure Rose threatens to stab someone with her knitting needles if they don’t stop the rumour mill about you. Like sensible people, they believe her and try to stop it. It doesn’t work, but Rose appreciates the effort and no blood is spilt.

Until someone makes a comment about how weird the four of you are, how Rose is some emo freak, Dave’s a jumpy try hard and John needs a girl to stand up for him. He doesn’t even get to say anything about you, not that you would have cared, but he badmouthed _them_ , you punch him in the nose and blood spurts everywhere.

You feel sort of annoyed with yourself. If you get kicked out of this school, you’ll be letting Rose down. None of them say a word when you get called to the principal’s office, but they all follow, Dave on one side with his arm around you, Rose on the other with her hand in yours and John next to her, an arm thrown around both of your shoulders. The teachers don’t say anything, they’ve come to understand that trying to separate the four of you is about as likely as discovering a unicorn in the backyard.

You get suspended for two weeks and Dave almost knocks out the teacher.

You’re a little disappointed that he doesn’t. And that’s when you know something’s off with you. 

Your name is Jade Harley and you are never going to be the happy-go-lucky girl you once were.


	4. Chapter 4

Your name is Dave Strider and you don’t think this is going to work, at all. This little scheme to get the four of you back into the ‘real’ world just isn’t cutting it. You’re all doing worse, even though sometimes it feels like its better.

You know, deep down, it was always your job to protect them. And you failed miserably at it before. You tried so hard to keep them safe and just ended up damning yourself to hell a million times over. You think you should have learned your lesson, but you never did.

Until the day you die, you will continue to damn yourself for those three. Why? Because they are all you have, they are your everything and you love them. You, of course, don’t tell them this frequently. Or at all. But you’re pretty sure they know. You hope they do in any case.

This whole school scheme, that was Rose’s idea. You were pretty against it to begin with. But Jade started running around like a headless chicken, she was so excited, you’re pretty sure if you’d said no, a puppy somewhere would have died. So you went with it, occasionally shooting Rose a ‘are you sure?’ glance during the process of getting them enrolled. 

Things got rocky not long after you arrived. People started attacking John, making fun of Rose, you punched out a couple of guys and so did Jade. Both of you got suspended. You still get really fucking jumpy every time there’s a sudden noise, and your first instinct is to shield them from the blow. You keep reaching for a sword that isn’t there, because while you can get away with a lot, a sword just might be pushing it.

Everything switches between being either very calm, almost normal, and incredibly awful. You’re either chilling peacefully with your three best friends, or in a fight because some asshole had a go at one of them. And then you get suspended.

You probably should avoid that. Rose gets this disappointed look on her face, John shakes his head at you and Jade just sighs. You wish they could understand. Sometimes you think Jade comes close, in some weird sort of way, but it’s never quite the same. Rose wants to understand but…well, there are some things you can’t put into words.

People are definitely starting to notice something’s up with the four of you. And now Rose has you guarding Jade constantly, because until very recently, none of you really understood just how vicious she is in the defence of you three. John hasn’t said anything, and he doesn’t have to. You all know how bad things have gotten. But you’re still trying because Rose wanted this, and Jade wants this, and sometimes John looks like an ordinary kid and it’d kill you to take all that away from them.

Even though you think it might be killing them to stay.

The more you tell yourself that this isn’t your call, the more you want to drag them away from all this and put them somewhere safe. You can’t be with all three of them every single hour of the day, no matter how hard you try.

Well you could, but that would lead to more dead Dave’s. And you’re pretty sure that if you let something like that happen in this new world you’ve been given, they’ll never forgive you. You aren’t sure you could live with that, so for the moment you do a good job of keeping an eye on them, knowing where each of them are at any one time and waiting for that shift that happens whenever their emotions are on a high.

You think it’s a side effect of hitting god tier that none of the others have noticed yet. Everyone knows about what happens to the wind when John’s running on a high, he isn’t hard to tell. Jade and Rose though, those you have to be looking for. A special shift or a beam of light where no light should be, those are the little things that tell you when they’re in trouble. More than once a teacher has had a go at you for running off during the middle of class without a word, but they don’t get it.

They _need_ you. And you need them. Just like you need food, water, _air_. 

You’re slowly discovering just how messed that game left you. Aside from the hero complex you seem to have developed, blood is not something you can handle anymore. You were doing some stupid thing in biology class and had to have John walk you out. You made him go back to class before you started hyperventilating and shaking.

Jade finds you a little later. Something about a shift in the time space balance telling her where you were. You don’t know, you don’t care, _you can’t stop fucking shaking._

You wish she wasn’t there because she isn’t meant to see you like this. Somewhere in that stupid head of yours you know you are their _knight_ and you’re meant to protect them. But all you can see is blood, everywhere. Not yours, no you’re fine with that, you’ve come to terms with your death a thousand times over, but _his_.

She stays with you until the shaking passes and you can see straight, but neither of you go to class for the rest of the day. You hide behind the cafeteria with your head in her lap and she tells you stories, made up ones, ones about her life on the island, about the long three years you spent apart.

The others find you eventually and you all sit there in a pile of sad eyes and broken hearts, but it’s alright. You all like being close sometimes, it’s a nice way to pretend your heart hasn’t turned to ice. You’re pretty sure at some point the teachers are going to notice how many classes you all miss, but Rose and Jade refuse to let you fall behind in terms of your studies. Rose begrudgingly admits you have potential, and Jade still believes you’re smart, despite often doing some really stupid things.

But it’s one Tuesday morning, almost a month and a half from then that everything goes to hell. Everything that could possibly go wrong does, and it happens all at once.

Someone has a go at Rose about something that happened in her creative writing class (You’re even more pissed off because you _know_ how much that class meant to her), and she, of course, remained calm but threatened to gouge their eyes out with knitting needles. Jade was not as calm and nearly broke someone’s nose.

She didn’t _actually_ punch anyone. They caught her fist before she could. John completely flipped his shit when he found out and no amount of soothing words would stop it. A hurricane almost knocked down the school with the four of you inside. 

Most of what you remember from that afternoon is Rose whispering to John while you all sat under a table. It became apparent fairly quickly that John had little to no control over what was happening. Jade was terrified and kept switching between clinging onto you and clinging onto John. Rose was busy, even Jade respected that.

Your name is Dave Strider and this isn’t working.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by a lovely work done by user Changeling_Serenade called Looking In, and you should all go and read it because it is quite lovely.
> 
> Very sorry I completely forgot to mention that when it was first posted.


End file.
